To Allison Delarue
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. May 24, 1949
Dear Mr. Delarue,
Your kind note and Eugene Berman’s designs make me think of Paris and the Russian Ballet of fifty years ago rather than of Italy where I live pleasantly but far from all artists and festive shows.
They also make me think of an old friend who I understand has become a sort of patron empressario for ballets in New York, George de Cuevas. His wife is the daughter of Charles Strong, with whom I had my pied-â-terre in Paris for many years; and I took his place (he being at a sanatorium in Switzerland) at his daughter’s marriage. You see how modern the existence of an old recluse may become in this “age-of-troubles”.
The Russian ballet was, of all modern novelties, the one that seemed to me to set the arts really on the highway again. But have they kept to it?
Yours sincerely,
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Eight, 1948-1952. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ.